“…hard in a very sweet way,” says Bradley Wiggins

by Al Pastor

“At the top end it’s a very sweet pain, ” writes the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France.

“It’s hard to put into layman’s terms how you feel. It’s a nice way of being wasted. When you are fit and your form is great those efforts are hard in a very sweet way. Sometimes you haven’t got the form and you are suffering, but if you are hurting when the form’s good, it can be an incredible feeling. When you are getting dropped in a race it’s horrible, a lot of people who ride sportives and so on would be able to relate to that. But when you are off the front as I was in Paris-Nice that March or leading a time trial, it’s a different kind of pain altogether. At the top end it’s a very sweet pain. It’s mixed with the endorphins you get from the effort; it’s what makes you able to push even harder. I’ve been at both ends of the spectrum.”